[CentOS] Install CentOS 6.3 to partitionable mdadm array

Wed Nov 7 15:36:07 UTC 2012
Arun Khan <knura9 at gmail.com>

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Hal Martin <hal.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm trying to install CentOS 6.3 to an mdadm partitionable array and
> not having any luck.
>
> The installer only allows me to create one file system per md device,
> or specify the md device as a LVM physical volume. I don't want to do
> either, I want to create one md device and create multiple partitions
> on top of the md device.
>
> I thought that perhaps the installer was preventing me from doing this
> because it wasn't possible to boot off a partitionable mdadm array,
> but through googling I don't believe this is the case. (See links at
> the bottom of this email)

> http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/md.txt
> http://www.miquels.cistron.nl/raid/
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447818

Please see this thread from June/2012 on the subject matter

<http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2012-June/126927.html>

and the solution I found later on and posted in Oct/2012 --
<http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2012-October/129654.html>

 I did install the latest dracut rpms per the bug reports listed in
above but the fix is not 100% - for example if the second disk fails,
I still get kernel panic

The first hit with search string "centos partitionable raid"  gives me this
<http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Install_On_Partitionable_RAID1> which
is already discussed in my June post.

It does install if you follow the steps listed for release 6.

In retrospect, I would suggest stay away from this method.  Go the
traditional route; carve up the two disks per your requirements and
make the md devices for root, boot, home etc.

HTH,
-- Arun Khan